Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and less familiar battles such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh’s warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed 2 million people.
Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners’ victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, Huey pilots from Arkansas.
No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings’ readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the 21st century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.
Table of contents :
Dedication
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Epigraph
Introduction
Note on Styles Adopted in the Text
Glossary
1 Beauty and Many Beasts
....1 CLINGING TO AN EMPIRE
....2 THE VIETMINH MARCH
2 The ‘Dirty War’
....1 STEAMROLLER TYPES
....2 WASHINGTON PICKS UP THE TAB
....3 PEASANTS
3 The Fortress That Never Was
....1 WAITING FOR GIAP
....2 DISASTER BECKONS
4 Bloody Footprints
....1 QUIT – OR BOMB?
....2 ‘A TRIUMPH OF THE WILL’
....3 GENEVA
5 The Twin Tyrannies
....1 ‘A REGIME OF TERROR’
....2 ‘THE ONLY BOY WE GOT’
....3 BOOM TIME
....4 A RECALL TO ARMS
6 Some of the Way With JFK
....1 ‘THEY’RE GOING TO LOSE THEIR COUNTRY IF …’
....2 McNAMARA’S MONARCHY
....3 LE DUAN RAISES HIS STAKE
7 1963: Coffins for Two Presidents
....1 SMALL BATTLE, BIG STORY: AP BAC
....2 THE BUDDHISTS REVOLT
....3 KILLING TIME
8 The Maze
....1 ‘ENOUGH WAR FOR EVERYBODY’
....2 DODGING DECISIONS
9 Into the Gulf
....1 LIES
....2 HAWKS ASCENDANT
10 ‘We Are Puzzled About How to Proceed’
....1 DOWN THE TRAIL
....2 COMMITTAL
11 The Escalator
....1 ‘BOTTOM OF THE BARREL’
....2 NEW PEOPLE, NEW WAR
12 ‘Trying to Grab Smoke’
....1 WARRIORS AND WATER-SKIERS
....2 UNFRIENDLY FIRE
....3 TRAPS AND TRAIL DUST
13 Graft and Peppermint Oil
....1 STEALING
....2 RULING
....3 GURUS
14 Rolling Thunder
....1 STONE AGE, MISSILE AGE
....2 ‘UP NORTH’
15 Taking the Pain
....1 BEST OF TIMES, WORST OF TIMES
....2 FRIENDS
16 Waist-Deep in the Big Muddy
....1 PEACENIKS
....2 WARNIKS
....3 FIELDCRAFT
....4 GUNS
17 Our Guys, Their Guys: the Vietnamese War
....1 SONG QUA NGAY – ‘LET’S JUST GET THROUGH THE DAY’
....2 FIGHTERS
....3 SAIGON SOLDIERS
18 Tet
....1 PRELUDE
....2 FUGUE
....3 A SYMBOLIC HUMILIATION
19 The Giant Reels
....1 FIGHTING BACK
....2 SURRENDER OF A PRESIDENT
20 Continuous Replay
....1 DYING
....2 TALKING
21 Nixon’s Inheritance
....1 A CRUMBLING ARMY
....2 AUSSIES AND KIWIS
....3 GODS
....4 VIETNAMISATION
22 Losing by Instalments
....1 THE FISHHOOK AND THE PARROT’S BEAK
....2 COUNTER-TERROR
....3 LAM SON 719
23 Collateral Damage
....1 MARY ANN
....2 THE ‘GOAT’
....3 ‘LET’S GO HOME’
24 The Biggest Battle
....1 LE DUAN FORCES THE PACE
....2 THE STORM BREAKS
....3 AN EMPTY VICTORY
25 Big Ugly Fat Fellers
....1 ‘IT WILL ABSOLUTELY, TOTALLY, WIPE OUT McGOVERN’
....2 ‘WE’LL BOMB THE BEJEEZUS OUT OF THEM’
26 A Kiss Before Dying
....1 THE PRISONER
....2 ‘PEACE’
....3 WAR OF THE FLAGS
27 The Last Act
....1 INVASION
....2 ‘AH, MY COUNTRY, MY POOR COUNTRY’
28 Afterwards
....1 VENGEANCE
....2 THE AUDIT OF WAR
Picture Section
Acknowledgements
Notes and References
Bibliography
Index

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